Ecostart centre boosts emerging high-tech businesses

prospective

A key factor in the marketing of new services or innovative products is time. Provision of adequate space is a necessary instrument to help companies achieve an industrial profile and to reduce the time to market.The Ecostart centre is a business incubator, which aims to increase the availability of services that foster the growth of small- and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs) in the research and development field in Foetz, Luxembourg. The existing Ecostart centre already hosts 10 companies; mainly in research, development and high-tech sectors with high added value. It currently houses around 100 employees.Incubating talentThe construction of a new incubation hub will give the Ecostart centre an additional 1 000 m2 of office space and 3 300 m2 of workshop space. This brings the total capacity of the Ecostart centre up to 12 700 m2, containing 2 700 m2 of office space and 10 000 m2 of industrial space to offer to innovative young companies.It is estimated that the extension will allow for the creation of an additional 2-4 companies per year, creating an extra 15-20 jobs.The extension to the centre will support and provide ongoing assistance to the enterprises it houses during this start-up phase. The Luxembourg government will rent the facilities to these companies for a limited period of time, until they have matured enough to be able to obtain their own facilities. The centre will also incubate foreign companies who are looking to establish operations in Luxembourg. The time a company will spend in the centre is estimated to be around 4-6 years.An environment of ideasThe Ecostart centre extension builds upon its earlier work by supporting businesses in their early stages who wish to locate their operations amongst other young start-up companies in Luxembourg; being together with businesses facing similar challenges aids problem-solving and encourages communication. For example, the meeting spaces facilitate networking between different enterprises. The Ecostart centre is also an ideal environment for stimulating ideas, which is vital for growth in industry.Total investment and EU fundingTotal investment for the project “Extension of the Ecostart Enterprise and Innovation Centre in Foetz” is EUR 6 203 976, with the EU’s European Regional Development Fund contributing EUR 1 550 994 through the “Luxembourg” Operational Programme for the 2007-2013 programming period.